May 4, 2015

Stronger than coffee,
the memory of the mandarin
segments the air with tang.
Smell is better than taste
(no pips to spit and
punctuate the saucer…)
Orange air flips a finger
as I sip staid warm brown.

P.S. Cottier

Perhaps I should write a book of poems entirely set in a café, called First World Beverages or somesuch. I just wrote a prose piece, soon to be published, about how annoyed I get with poetry that seems to reject all the world except for the poet and his or her feelings, as if feelings have no connection to the society in which they are felt. Mmm, I must order another coffee and have a think about that…That is my world, I suppose, but there is the occasional idea as well, floating around like the smell of mandarins. (They are healthier than madeleines, too.)

I do quite like the pips as ellipses though, and the hint of concrete poetry as the brackets form a saucer. Poésie porcèlaine sounds so much nicer than concrète, don’t you agree?

Lastly, my pocket book Paths Into Inner Canberra (Ginninderra Press) is now being stocked by Book Lore in Wattle Street, Lyneham (that’s in Canberra). It is on the front counter, so go in and buy one for $4. Keep this deserving woman in coffee!

Book Lore is a fantastic second-hand bookstore, located between two cafés. In one of these establishments, a poem about mandarins and coffee was written, just today. The photo in the helmet was taken outside the second of these places, by a Mr G. Dunn, after wine was had, and is one of several in the wee pamphlet. The pocket book can also be ordered on the publisher’s site using Paypal. (I am number 3, she said, mysteriously.)

February 25, 2014

That photograph is of the view of and from Tilley’s, which is less than a five minute walk from my house. When not trapped in the spider’s web of editing, I fly down and write there.

Here, for example, is a draft of this very poem, written at Tilley’s:

I had never thought before I started writing how the ‘U’ at the beginning of umbrella looks like an umbrella blown inside out. Small step from there to coffee cup, really. (And yes, I realise that those umbrellas are not khaki! Also that ‘in upside down’ is a little clumsy. But it reminds me of a blown umbrella, somehow.)

I am longing to be back with my writing routine, away from the exigencies of editing poets’ biographical notes for The Stars Like Sand. I am not really given to minimalism in poetry, and want the time to sprawl over several stanzas. I am sure the my fellow editor Tim Jones feels the same way in regard to wanting more writing time, although he seems to be involved in a myriad of other activities as well.